linux-cve-announce - CVE-2025-38050: mm/hugetlb: fix kernel NULL pointer dereference when replacing free hugetlb folios

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Message-ID: <2025061831-CVE-2025-38050-421a@gregkh>
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2025 11:33:45 +0200
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-38050: mm/hugetlb: fix kernel NULL pointer dereference when replacing free hugetlb folios

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>

Description
===========

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm/hugetlb: fix kernel NULL pointer dereference when replacing free hugetlb folios

A kernel crash was observed when replacing free hugetlb folios:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000028
PGD 0 P4D 0
Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI
CPU: 28 UID: 0 PID: 29639 Comm: test_cma.sh Tainted 6.15.0-rc6-zp #41 PREEMPT(voluntary)
RIP: 0010:alloc_and_dissolve_hugetlb_folio+0x1d/0x1f0
RSP: 0018:ffffc9000b30fa90 EFLAGS: 00010286
RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: 0000000000342cca RCX: ffffea0043000000
RDX: ffffc9000b30fb08 RSI: ffffea0043000000 RDI: 0000000000000000
RBP: ffffc9000b30fb20 R08: 0000000000001000 R09: 0000000000000000
R10: ffff88886f92eb00 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: ffffea0043000000
R13: 0000000000000000 R14: 00000000010c0200 R15: 0000000000000004
FS:  00007fcda5f14740(0000) GS:ffff8888ec1d8000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
CR2: 0000000000000028 CR3: 0000000391402000 CR4: 0000000000350ef0
Call Trace:
<TASK>
 replace_free_hugepage_folios+0xb6/0x100
 alloc_contig_range_noprof+0x18a/0x590
 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f
 ? down_read+0x12/0xa0
 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f
 cma_range_alloc.constprop.0+0x131/0x290
 __cma_alloc+0xcf/0x2c0
 cma_alloc_write+0x43/0xb0
 simple_attr_write_xsigned.constprop.0.isra.0+0xb2/0x110
 debugfs_attr_write+0x46/0x70
 full_proxy_write+0x62/0xa0
 vfs_write+0xf8/0x420
 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f
 ? filp_flush+0x86/0xa0
 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f
 ? filp_close+0x1f/0x30
 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f
 ? do_dup2+0xaf/0x160
 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f
 ksys_write+0x65/0xe0
 do_syscall_64+0x64/0x170
 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e

There is a potential race between __update_and_free_hugetlb_folio() and
replace_free_hugepage_folios():

CPU1                              CPU2
__update_and_free_hugetlb_folio   replace_free_hugepage_folios
                                    folio_test_hugetlb(folio)
                                    -- It's still hugetlb folio.

  __folio_clear_hugetlb(folio)
  hugetlb_free_folio(folio)
                                    h = folio_hstate(folio)
                                    -- Here, h is NULL pointer

When the above race condition occurs, folio_hstate(folio) returns NULL,
and subsequent access to this NULL pointer will cause the system to crash.
To resolve this issue, execute folio_hstate(folio) under the protection
of the hugetlb_lock lock, ensuring that folio_hstate(folio) does not
return NULL.

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-38050 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 6.14 with commit 04f13d241b8b146b23038bffd907cb8278391d07 and fixed in 6.14.9 with commit e97283978a9848190d451f7038ac399613445f79
	Issue introduced in 6.14 with commit 04f13d241b8b146b23038bffd907cb8278391d07 and fixed in 6.15 with commit 113ed54ad276c352ee5ce109bdcf0df118a43bda

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2025-38050
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	mm/hugetlb.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e97283978a9848190d451f7038ac399613445f79
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/113ed54ad276c352ee5ce109bdcf0df118a43bda